Analysis: Why Vikings linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel is a perfect fit for Brian Flores’ defense

LONDON – When Brian Flores is scouting defensive players before the draft each year, one of the most important things he wants to find out about them is their learning style.

In predraft Zoom calls, prospect visits and interviews at the NFL combine, the Vikings defensive coordinator comes equipped with a set of questions to determine how players best absorb information and how much they can retain. When the Dolphins met with Andrew Van Ginkel before the 2019 draft, Flores, then the head coach, learned the linebacker was a conceptual thinker, capable of seeing the big themes behind the facts he learned in a classroom and adding his own ideas about how a defensive strategy could develop.

“A lot of information is not too much for Gink,” Flores said in an interview last month. “Whereas for some guys, it feels like you can overload them, it just feels like he’s never overloaded.”

It meant Flores’ style of defense, which requires players to think of their roles beyond static position descriptions, fit the fifth-round pick perfectly. Van Ginkel showed his playmaking ability in three years playing for Flores in Miami, making 20 tackles for loss, forcing four fumbles and recovering two, including one he brought back for a 78-yard touchdown in 2020 against the Rams. Van Ginkel scored twice more in his final two seasons with the Dolphins after Flores was fired, bringing back a blocked punt for a score in 2022 and poaching a Sam Howell screen pass on his way to a 33-yard interception return score against the Commanders in 2023.

Flores knew there could be more for Van Ginkel in Minnesota, and coach Kevin O’Connell had been impressed by the linebacker since the Dolphins’ 2020 win over the Rams while he was the offensive coordinator there. The Vikings agreed to a two-year deal with him on the first day of free agency in March, moving quickly to add a slippery pass rusher with a unique instinct.

Van Ginkel showed that instinct right away in Week 1, anticipating a Giants screen pass and intercepting Daniel Jones on the way to a 10-yard touchdown return. On Sunday against the Jets at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, he did it to one of the best.

He became just the fifth player in Aaron Rodgers’ career to return an interception for a touchdown against the quarterback, stepping into Rodgers’ throwing lane to pick off a first-quarter pass before picking up a block from Harrison Smith and steamrolling down the sideline for a 63-yard touchdown. It was Van Ginkel’s fifth career touchdown and his second of the season, making him the first defensive player with multiple scores in the same year since the Patriots’ Kyle Dugger did it in 2022.

“It’s a great feeling, obviously, when you can make a play like that,” Van Ginkel said. “It can change the game. It’s exciting; I’m just glad I caught the ball, and the rest is history.”

The Vikings lined up in an all-out blitz look, with seven defenders on the line of scrimmage and four defensive backs aligned in man coverage over the Jets’ receivers. The Jets had six players protecting Rodgers; Flores’ pressures often drop defenders into “hot” zones where quarterbacks might be looking for a quick throw to beat blitzers the offense isn’t set up to block.

“In that play, I was just kind of reading the guard [Alijah Vera-Tucker] and he came at me, so I dropped and tried to get into that pocket where the hot throw is,” Van Ginkel said. “[It was] something that we planned on and expected.”

With the Vikings lining up with seven defenders across the line, the Jets “got to something we had talked about” to counter Minnesota’s pressures, Rodgers said. “I peeked the back side, or something to the left, to see if we were hot or not [with unblocked pass rushers on that side]. And, doing that, I totally lost the angle and he made a nice play.”

Van Ginkel took a step toward Vera-Tucker, then drifted to his left where he expected Rodgers would throw behind the blitz. He snatched Rodgers’ throw for Garrett Wilson on a quick in-breaking route and found his way to the Jets sideline, where Smith’s block cleared out Breece Hall as the last possible tackler.

“It’s kind of reading the quarterback’s eyes, kind of expecting the ball where it should go,” Van Ginkel said. “There’s a couple different answers when we show that all-up look. It’s something that I anticipated, and dropped to the right spot.”

Later in the game, Van Ginkel said, Rodgers told him, “Christmas came early for you.” The soft-spoken linebacker just replied, “Thank you,” and walked away.

The pick-six might have seemed like a gift, given how rarely Rodgers has given it to defensive players during his career. The Vikings, though, have seen Van Ginkel do it in training camp, practice and twice now in games. At this point, linebacker Jonathan Greenard said, “I don’t even get excited.”

“Gink is such an instinctual player that these things are normal for him. He expects these things to happen,” Greenard added. “He should have had another pick, but he slipped on one of them. Could have got right in the windows with another pick. But that’s just Gink. Everybody knows that he’s like a Swiss Army knife, middle linebacker on the edge, nickel, you name it. He’s just a special player, and he’s a guy who’s also been in a [Flores] system before, so he can help us out with certain things to expect out of offenses.”

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